British poet Edwin Brock, who died in 1997, is best known for his poem:
5 Ways to Kill a Man
“There are many cumbersome ways to kill a man.
You can make him carry a plank of wood
to the top of a hill and nail him to it. ..
Or you can take a length of steel,…
and attempt to pierce the metal cage he wears….
…, you may, if the wind
allows, blow gas at him.
In an age of aeroplanes, you may fly
miles above your victim and dispose of him by
pressing one small switch. …
… Simpler, direct, and much more neat
is to see that he is living somewhere in the middle
of the twentieth century, and leave him there.”
But it’s the 21th century now. This poem should be updated.
How about describing a 6th Way to Kill a Man? Not just ‘a man’ but men , women and childen too?
What if you lock them up, en masse, in very unsanitary conditions and look the other way when Covid-19 cases arise?
Gaza has been labelled for some time an ‘open air prison’, a misleading word really. Prison, in our understanding , isn’t a place where people are born and remain for the rest of their lives. Prison isn’t a place where affordable water is undrinkable, where clinics , schools, farms, fishing boats are deliberately destroyed, where freedom flotillas bringing badly needed medical aid are denied entry, where children, severely traumatised having seen so much death and destruction, wonder if they will be the next to die.
Covid-19 is in Gaza now.
Gaza is a man-made hellhole.
Israel is to blame for its ghastly medieval siege but the West is guilty too.
Silence is complicity.
New Zealand is highly respected internationally. If New Zealand openly promoted foreign policies based on humanitarian norms, openly demanded that the siege on Gaza be lifted, activists around the world would likely be emboldened to bring pressure on their own governments to follow suit.
WHERE IS HUMANITY?
Lois Griffiths is a human rights activist.
Griffiths typically omits the pertinent facts that a) Egypt’s blockade of Gaza is concurrent and harsh b) Israel’s blockade is legal under International Law since Hamas, the thugs that run Gaza with an iron fist and are a proxy of Iran, are committed, along with Iran, to Israel’s destruction and are more interested in purchasing weapons to achieve that end than they are in improving living conditions for their people or building a viable state. They shoot, torture, execute anyone who opposes them and journalists have described the bodies of those executed swinging from lamp posts to terrorise the populace. Hamas squanders aid money on terror tunnels with the sole aim of murdering and kidnapping Israeli civilians, and deliberately place their children in the line of fire to exploit the infamous ‘dead baby photo’, which has lost all impact. And you wonder why the world, including the Arab world, is becoming increasingly indifferent to these vicious losers? WHERE IS THE HONESTY?
Now Gaby, would you like to list Israeli infringements of Palestinians’ rights?
Just to show you aren’t at all biased.
Wrong in fact as per usual since the blockade of Gaza is not legal in international law. Israel doesnt care two hoots about international law and never has so anyone like Gaby resorting to claims of international law supporting Zionist atrocities is really just trying to blow smoke up your arse. It is in fact the Palestinians that have international law on their side. Hamas are allowed to use violence to repel the invading Israeli defence force. If Israel doesnt like this they are free to remove the blockade and withdraw their invading army. Its that simple
I see that there is a big list of bad behaviour by Gaza-ites that can be retaliated to. At what date will Israel consider it has had its fair amount of retaliation? Perhaps the Palestinians are being the scapegoats for the devilish behaviour to the Jews in World War 2 and before?
Perhaps Israel will always regard any retaliation from Palestine as provocation. Perhaps they lost their hearts and minds in the inhumanity to Jewish people on a vast scale and that will always stain their minds. That anywhere Jews settle can turn them out even after hundreds of years because of some whim, some madman, some bone of contention that can only be answered with Jewish bones, is still in their memory and cannot be forgotten.
Perhaps it is time for the rest of the world to take action to rehouse the Palestinians and stop asking Israel to change. Such a big wrong has been done, it is too hard for the Israelis to change, conquer their fears and trust better relationships with Arab countries, even with the nuclear weapon behind them. Every time Palestinians retaliate it becomes another mark against them, and vice versa, and so it goes. I do not think anything can be done to enable the Palestinians to have a secure and thriving community and there would always be resentment in some way from both sides.
The list of Jewish psychologists is immense and it would be helpful to know their opinions if the wounds inflicted on the Jewish psyche, and on the minds of Israeli Jews. can ever be healed.
There have been studies looking at the two participants in the conflict. Here are some links:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1524838015613774
Psychological Aspects of the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict: A Systematic Review
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2005.00444.x
Psychological Correlates of Support for Compromise: A Polling Study of Jewish‐Israeli Attitudes toward Solutions to the Israeli‐Palestinian Conflict
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230603110_7
A Psychological Earthquake in the Israeli-Jewish Society: Changing Opinions Following the Camp David Summit and the Al-Aqsa Intifada
Youre kidding surely? The psychological damage suffered by an agressive colonial settler nation agressively invading and settling a weaker nation?? Might just as well ask if white Australia was psychologically damaged by their agressive intrusion against aborigines and whether aborigines ahould now be settled elsewhere!! Platitudes may flow easily and many have. Oh dear what can we do? Oh well just capitulate to the bully. After all we dont want to inflict any psychological damage!
Gabby’s zionist sympathies blinker her logic.
Where does it state in international law that Israel can treat the people in Gaza so inhumanely?
https://jcpa.org/article/israel%E2%80%99s-naval-blockade-of-gaza-is-legal-necessary/
Read and learn.
Sorry to deflate you Gaby but opinion doesnt make for international law. The UN can impose a blockade because the UN creates international law. Who else do you think is able to?? Certainly not Israel. So if they cant get the UN to support their blockade of Gaza then by definition it is illegal under international law.
The last straw that Israel has been clutching is now blowing in the wind namely that the occupied territories would one day be the subject of peace negotiations. However, the intention – and intention is all that is required – to annex the West Bank makes the occupation now also illegal. There is now nowhere for the Zionists to hide. Their state is now officially an apartheid state.
https://dissidentvoice.org/2020/07/liberal-zionism-begins-the-journey-towards-a-one-state-solution/
Wrong. Sorry to burst your false bubble, but a blockade is legal if it’s purpose is self defense and as long as it is notified, e.g. US’s blockade of Cuba during the missile crisis. Israel is defending itself against the belligerent terrorists,Hamas, sworn to its destruction. Therefore, the blockade is legal, as is Egypt’s, with which of course, you people have no issues. Do you even know what apartheid means? I lived under apartheid in South Africa and I can categorically state that Israel is NOT an apartheid state. Come on, show us ONE sign that reads ‘Jews Only’ or Arabs Only’. You can’t. What you call ‘apartheid’ is Israel’s inviolate right to security against existential threats from a violent and intransigent enemy. Nice try.
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